For example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2006-41890 describes an image forming apparatus capable of executing a plurality of functions by a single image reading operation in response to a user's simple operating instruction to an operating portion of the image forming apparatus.
In the image forming apparatus described in the Publication, an operation key used to execute two or more functions is provided to the operating portion. According to the image forming apparatus described in the Publication, in response to that the user performs a simple operation such as pressing the operation key, two or more functions can be carried out by one image reading operation at the image reading portion.
In the above image forming apparatus, operation keys provided to execute continuously two or more predetermined functions, e.g., a “scanner+copy mode key” or a “FAX+scanner+copy mode key” are provided.
Therefore, in the above image forming apparatus, in some cases, two or more functions that the user intends to execute do not match two or more functions that are executable by using the operation key.
If two or more functions that the user intends to execute do not match two or more functions that are executable by using the operation key, the user has to make a plurality of operations to execute individually two or more functions that the user intends to execute.
As a result, in the above image forming apparatus, in some cases, the operation key provided to execute continuously two or more predetermined functions cannot be utilized effectively and thus the usability becomes worse.